Secret Wars #6 of 8: Fatherhood versus State Collectivism

Art: Essad Ribic
Story: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 7th October 2015

This article is not a review. It’s intention is to discuss the role of fatherhood, using Secret Wars #6 to illustrate some of the broader points about the importance of fathers within the family unit and as a vital component in today’s fight against the collectivisation agenda pushed by the modern state apparatus.

In Secret Wars #6 a young girl (Valeria) is undergoing the process of realisation that her stepfather is a liar. His name is Doctor Doom. He is a dictator, a man pretending to be God. He represents the western democratic bogeyman of 2015, the anti-democratic dictator. This evil man must be disposed by western military intervention. He represents the past. He is an obstacle to change.

Valeria Richards appears to be about twelve years old, and is portrayed as independent, intellectual, very smart, very questioning, and very self-aware. She is like no twelve-year-old girl that I have ever met. Simply put, she is exceptional, a genius.

This positioning of the exceptional young female who questioning male authority figures is a common theme in contemporary comic books. The old structure of western society is portrayed as being organised around male power, normally tied to religion. It is portrayed as corrupt, violent and an obstacle to human progress. It needs to be replaced by young females. The message is clear. Old men need to step down. Religion is a lie. There is no God. The message is feminist and atheist.

The argument is that men, and the religions that they have created, have made the world the terrible place that it is today. Men and religion are oppressive symbols of the past. Women and atheism are the future. What we need then is a brave new (atheist) world controlled by exceptional young women. This is the idea, and it comes from Rockefeller funded university classes that push Marxist, feminist identity politic cultural programming onto the middle-classes, specifically girls, but men get it as well.

This is how it works: Middle class children are taught that white males are to blame for all of the evils of the world. The real reasons (blind obedience to the violently coercive power of the centralised state) is not taught. They are taught that the solution is to build up girls as the replacement, as the future leaders, that girls (because they are not boys) will make the world a better place.

Boys and girls go through the same cultural programming, girls are empowered by it, and as boys want to please girls, they go along with it as well. It doesn’t matter if the underlying assumptions are true, or not. What matters is that boys want to please girls, so they are happy to accept it as truth, even if it’s not, even if all the evidence around them contradicts what they have been programmed to believe. What young man would want to be labelled as a misogynist? None, and so they go along with the cultural programming.

Will the future then be a utopian society ran by female geniuses? No, it will not. The future is NOW, as this cultural programming has been pushed by universities for over fifty years, and has been a constant in progressive mainstream media texts for the past decade, at least.

So why isn’t the world a wonderful place today? What went wrong?

Instead of producing a western world of female geniuses changing the world for the better, what has been produced is a broken society where family break-up is the norm. The family unit has been targeted, and destroyed, and females now compete with men in order to serve state control systems that collectivise the individual and make the world a worse place for all of us all, men, women and children alike.

Men have been continuously told that they are bad, just because they are men, and women have never been more depressed, lonelier and isolated.

The progressive world of feminist ideology leads to frustration, depression and dependency upon the state. The genius girl as portrayed in Secret Wars #6 is all grown up now, and she is a retired government worker. She is a spinster, surrounded by cats, with no family of her own, drinking, taking prescription medicine for anxiety and depression, and wondering why her life turned out the way that it did. And how does she answer this question? She blames men, and thus, the cycle is complete.

In 2015 progressivism as pushed by cultural Marxism has created a society that blames men, depresses women, destroys families and empowers the state.

That is the inevitable end result of progressivism. When you attack tradition, attack masculinity itself and put young girls on undeserved pedestals you get a breakdown of the family, and a subsequent breakdown of society itself. Of course you do, what else could possibly happen? That is the disease of contemporary liberal ‘progressive’ ideology fused with third wave feminism. It is an ideology of destruction, of collapsing all that has come before it, in order to bring in a utopia that has never existed, and cannot exist as it goes against human nature itself.

In a progressive society nobody is empowered, women are miserable, families collapse, and the world that is created is a collectivist, soviet Russia style Hell hole. All that is remains is ideology wedded to the state. This is Hell. This is the world that we live in. This is the world that we are continuing to build with disenfranchised men, bitter, disappointed women and unhappy, fatherless children.

Secret Wars has a chance to tackle the ideology of collectivism wedded to the state. You have to remember that Doctor Doom is not the real father of Valeria. He is a stepfather, and thus could be portrayed as a state stand-in, an artificial substitute for the real father, the real head of the family unit. Valeria’s real father (Reed Richards) is plotting against the state as represented by Doom, so this story could put out a strong message about the role of the father in reuniting the family unit against the tyranny of the state.

If Doom represents the tyranny of the Collectivist State, a tyranny that takes the role of absent men/fathers within the family unit, then the victory of Reed Richards will be saying that men need to return to the family in order to resist the power of the collectivised state.

There are two issues left in this Secret Wars arc, and it’s very likely that this will happen, so even though I get fed up with this continuous pushing of the girl genius as the liberator of humanity, the likelihood is that this book will have a very positive conclusion. Will it happen, will the role of the father as a barrier against state collectivism be re-established, just as it needs to be in the real world? I hope so, and I’ll keep on reading in order to find out.

Comic review: Godzilla in Hell #3- Godzilla the Anarchist

Writers: Ulises Farinas & Erick Frietas
Art: Buster Moody
Publisher: IDW
Released: 30th September 2015



For me, this ostensibly ‘daft’ series about Godzilla in the land of the big red guy has been the surprise hit of 2015.  I expected a laugh from it, but what I have got is an excellent platform for artists and writers to show off and really explore their own creative inspirations.

Every month there has been a different writer and artist. I’ve reviewed all three months, so if you want to know what happened in the previous two issues then check them out on my blog. I strongly advise that you do, as they really do have a lot of offer.

Last month the art and concept was the star, but this month it’s all about the concept. The art serves this month, taking a backseat to the power of the story, and what it is so concisely (and successfully) trying to say.

The narrative structure is simple. Godzilla has a fight on earth. He blows it up, goes to Heaven, has a fight in Heaven, goes to Hell, has a fight in Hell, wins, leaves, alone, independent, unconquerable, refusing to join, refusing to submit to anybody, even Heaven itself.

It could read as being a bit daft, but it really isn’t. What is happening here is a comic book analogy of the real world battle between individualism and collectivism.

Godzilla refuses to join, and it doesn’t matter to him one jot whether it’s Satan or God himself that is asking him. He refuses because he is an individual. He couldn’t care less about factions, or ideology. He fights for himself. He rejects leadership, rejects followers, rejects kingship, and fights not for dominance, but for the moral right to be left alone and to be separate from the eternally warring collective.

Godzilla is the ultimate realisation of an anarchist freedom fighter. He isn’t heading up a Marxist or even right leaning anarchist army and going to war for dominance. No, he’s doing what all real anarchists should be doing, he’s refusing to join the collective group think ideology of any political constitution, and going 100% libertarian anarchist, and fighting for his right to be left alone from any external collectivist, group-think control system.

When Godzilla wins a battle he turns his back, and leaves. He has won, but the spoils of war do not interest him. He rejects followers, territory, power and (most importantly) authoritarianism collectivism.

Godzilla won't be led, and he certainly won’t be a leader either. It’s that mindset that is really going to change the world, the mindset of the independent individual who will not join, will not submit and will not lead another cult of collectivist followers.

Go your own way, do your own thing, embrace the life of a truly free individual, fight your own battles, for yourself, reject the collectivism of any group-think ideology, force yourself to be free, force yourself to be like Godzilla.



Rating: 8/10 (For it’s strong moral message of individualism versus collectivism this one is a winner)

UK election 2015 special: 2000AD PROG 1929- Review- A vegetarian at the all you can eat meat buffet

Artists and writers: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 6th May 2015


For a sci-fi comic supposedly set in the future 2000AD isn’t exactly very forward thinking or revolutionary in it’s thought processes, actually it’s about as old fashioned statist and status quo enforcing as the Sun newspaper or the BBC.

PROG 1929 comes on the eve of the largely pointless neo-liberal UK election of 2015 where voters get to choose between political non-representatives who care not a jot about their voters lives, but care a heck of a lot for the private corporations who fund and control them.

It’s a pointless election because there is no choice available. It would be like a vegetarian going to an all you can meat buffet, told to sit down and eat. After all, he has a choice, doesn’t he?

2000AD takes the mainstream view that the vegetarian at the meat buffet has a choice between different kinds of meat, and is therefore free to eat whatever he likes. Worst of all, 2000AD would then insist that if the vegetarian chooses ‘none of the above’ then he is not making his opinion count, and is therefore wasting the precious gift that is democracy.

DO YOU NOT GET IT 2000AD?

When there is no choice the voting process is meaningless. It’s like voting in a totalitarian state where there is only the ruling party to vote for. That is the situation in the UK today, a vote for neo-liberal, or neo-liberal. That is not a choice.

In this 2015 UK election there is no choice. The political parties are not serving the people; they are serving private corporate interests.

This is not a 'conspiracy' and only the most stubbornly dense of ‘earthlets’ can fail to understand this incontestable fact.

If you are voting today then you are not just voting for more statist slavery, but you are voting for neo-liberal statist slavery.

Your vote gives your tacit consent for more austerity, more war, less freedom and less prosperity. You are voting for more privatisation, more corporate raping and looting of the UK, more banker bailouts, more state subsidies of corporate losses and all of the rest of the criminal misdeeds that have been going on SINCE THE DAYS OF MARGARET BLOODY THATCHER.

WHAT IS THERE NOT TO GET??

And so, to protest the ridiculous level of deliberate ignorance and mainstream pandering that is happening in 2000AD PROG 1929 I’m going to refuse to review it. It’s harsh, because it’s a decent book, but I want to make a statement here.

When the mainstream media sham that is the UK election 2015 finally comes to an end, and it’s slavery as usual for the people of the UK, all I can do is hope that the people (2000AD included) finally begin to wake up and understand what is happening.

A vegetarian (that’s the voters) eating at an all you can eat meat buffet (that’s the election) is never going to get what he wants. This is a harsh reality to accept, but we have to get it through our thick skulls.

We need to open our eyes, engage, stop bloody voting for neo-liberal slavery like mindless automatons, and start doing something to regain some freedom around here.

Putting a cross on a bit of paper every four years or so and then spending the rest of the time ignoring ‘mundane reality’ (as 2000AD describes it) is passive, ignorant, lazy, childish cowardice. In short, it's the mindset of the enslaved. Comics are great, but it’s about time we grew the Tharg up.



PS- Slaine is still awesome. 

Book review: Parecomic- Who wants an alternative to exploitation and immorality?

Writer: Sean Michael Wilson
Artist: Carl Thompson
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Released: May 14th 2013
Website:
http://catalog.sevenstories.com/products/parecomic-michael-albert-and-the-story-of-participatory-economics


When you are born into a system it can feel that things have always been that way, that the system is organic, natural, and just the way that things are. Going against it can seem absolutely absurd, a bit like complaining that when you go swimming you tend to get a bit wet.

That’s the feeling you get when you complain about something called ‘Capitalism.’ A system where everybody is competing, everybody is stabbing each other in the back, everybody is exploiting, everybody is devious, nobody is to be trusted. It’s an economic system that encourages selfishness. Get what you can before somebody else gets it first. Morality is irrelevant in capitalism. It is Darwinian. Eat or be eaten. But is that really natural, is that what we are as human beings?

Some would argue that human beings are selfish, immoral animals, and that Capitalism is therefore perfectly in tune with the nature of humanity. Capitalism is selfish, harsh, immoral and violent because that is what humanity is. I disagree with that analysis, but I’ve always been a bit ‘weird,’ a bit different to everybody else. Call me a hopelessly deluded romantic, but I hold humanity in a higher regard than that. I see people as eminently mouldable, and if you place us in an immoral system and tell us that immorality is the norm from a very young age I see it as perfectly natural for us to act with no regards to anyone other than ourselves.

But what would happen to our species as a whole if we were born into a system structured around moral fairness and human happiness rather than exploitation and immorality? Would humanity, being the nasty brute that it is, reject it? Or would it flourish and ostracise anybody still clinging to the old capitalist model of selfish exploitation? I still have hope for humanity, so I’m going for the later, but even if you disagree with my assessment wouldn’t you like to give humanity a chance before consigning it to the dustbin of history? I want to give us a chance, and that’s what this comic book is all about.

Parecomic offers a moral alternative to Capitalism. The narrative follows the life story of Michael Albert, and explores his idea of a ‘Participatory economics.’ In this system, which is explored through conversations between Albert and various individuals, people are rewarded for the duration, intensity and onerous (does it benefit society, or not?) of their work. This is very different to our current system where 20% of the working population exist as a ‘co-ordinator.’ This class of managers and decision-makers monopolise empowering work, and rewards itself way out of proportion to the actual good that they do in the world. They exist as a new privileged class above the 80% of workers who spend their lives doing routine, powerless work with no say, no power, no control over their lives other than doing what the 20% order them to do.

There are two aspects of the ‘Participatory Economics’ model that particularly appeal to me, coming from an anarchist mindset as I do. The first was that there are no centralised governing bodies. All of the decision making in this model is done on the local level through democratic committees arguing through their problems, and then voting on it. There is no central committee telling them what they must, or must not do. It is democratic and empowering, as opposed to the current top down control system that we are currently living under.

The second aspect that stood out to me was the idea (that I introduced above) of a ‘co-ordinator’ class monopolising decision making, and therefore power in the current capitalist model. Albert’s new model dissipates this disparity in power by making work more varied, allocating a mix of empowering and routine jobs to everybody. No longer would there be only 20% of people doing all of the fulfilling work, with 80% doing the routine dis-empowering work. In a participatory economic society people would not monopolise empowering work, they would have to do some of the hard, socially beneficial work as well. Does this mean that a surgeon would have to spend some of his time answering the phone and cleaning the toilets then? Yes, it does. It also means that the person who spent 100% of their work life cleaning toilets or answering the phone will have increased opportunities to reach their full potential rather than wasting away their lives doing a job that sees them as a resource rather than as a human being.

I like this model. I like how it empowers people. I like how it is based on social good, on morality over greed and selfishness. I like how it sees the best in humanity and wants to help people reach the fullest of their potentialities rather than fit them into a disempowering system that exists to keep a tiny number of the population rich beyond belief whilst the rest have to struggle in a dehumanising system just to survive. I like how it takes the classic Marxist model of class conflict (Bourgeoisie versus the Proletariat) and adds a third class, that being the new 20% ‘co-ordinator’ class, a class that currently monopolises empowering work, and subjugates the majority through their increased levels of self confidence and access to decision making. But what I like best about this model is that it offers solutions to our current predicament that are non-centralised, democratic and based on morality and trying to make the world a better place for everybody.

Parecomic details this model in much more detail than I do here, so if you are in any way intrigued with what I have just discussed, then please buy the book. It’s part biography and part dissertation on the new economic model of participatory economics as outlined by Michael Albert. It’s a surprisingly entertaining, page-turner of a book, so don’t get hung up on the idea that you are going to be reading a dry academic book about economics. It’s clear, concise, enlightening, world expanding, entertaining and it will have you thinking about solutions to the current capitalist model of exploitation of the masses on behalf of the most ruthless, most privileged, most inhumane, most immoral, most selfish, most satanic of this planet’s population.

If you want solutions rather than complaints then this is a must purchase book. It fascinated me, and I read it as I would read any Stephen King page-turner. That says two things. Firstly, that writer Sean Michael Wilson and artist Carl Thompson did a fantastic job, and secondly, that Michael Albert has a model of change that resonates with truth.  Real change has to be economic change, not political rhetoric, and that is what is offered here. The ideas expressed within are world changing. If you have time for Batman then you certainly have time for this.

Rating: 10/10

Comic Book Review: Black Science #8- Anarchy and Science

Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Matteo Scalera & Dean White
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 27th August 2014


Black Science is a book that I picked up mid-run for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t have that many books to read this week, and secondly, I read the preview and it said something about ‘anarchism.’ Of course when ever people read ‘anarchism’ they get images of black face mask wearing goons chucking bricks through the windows of Starbucks, but you have to bear in mind that this image is about as far from anarchism as you can get. The black mask wearing goons are usually cops, or idiots paid by the cops to cause some chaos, thus giving the cops a reason to declare martial law and kick the crap out of all of those pesky, peaceful protestors who are concerned about banks raping and pillaging the planet.

Anarchism just means freedom from state control, or as it should be called, state imposed slavery. An anarchist wants people to live free from state-sanctioned coercion and the threat of imprisonment for the mere act of peaceful non-compliance, that’s all. You can see why the mainstream media demonises anarchists, can’t you? It’s simple. The anarchist wants freedom. The corporate whore mainstream media career obsessed journalist wants state-sanctioned slavery. I’ll discuss how this theme relates to the comic a bit later on in the review, but first off I want to briefly discuss the narrative core of the issue.

Black Science #8 has a very clever beginning with a first person narration helping the reader to build empathy for two children as they battle against weird alien creatures. The kids mouth the usual clichés about hitting back against bullies, but even though the message is verging on the cliché it’s still a good, positive thing to hear.

This action scene involving two apparently lost children fighting against a strange alien threat is duplicated at the end of the book. This means that the book begins with action and threat, and closes on action and threat. I like the technique as it gets the readers straight into the story and leaves them on a high as well. The middle section is not as exciting as the two sections with the kids, but I understand that this is a standard technique when writing comics. You begin and end with some action, and you put the slower, story/character based stuff in the middle.

This middle section consists of a team of ‘scientific anarchists’ having tense conversations before one of their previously taciturn members goes into narrative exposition mode, giving the readers a brief history of the strange device that they are all using. From what I can understand it’s an alien machine that causes more trouble than what it is worth. That’s where the ‘Black Science ‘ of the title comes from. This device appears to be alien technology that offers great benefits to those who possess it. The device offers huge technological advantages, but corruption inevitably follows.

This book is arguing that having high scientific technology in the hands of centralised human control systems is always a recipe for disaster.  Perhaps the only way to avoid disaster is to stop letting these centralised control systems exist in the first place? That’s where the idea of ‘anarchism’ comes into play.

This book is exploring what happens when a group of anarchist scientists get powerful technology that is usually only in the hands of the state. There is no such thing as an anarchist scientist who works for the state. These anarchist scientists must be working independently, free from state control. The question is, will they act any differently to the states that have always had this power in the past, or will human nature dictate that they act just as badly as their supposed opposites? I say ‘opposites’ because anarchists don’t use ‘Black Science’ technology to completely obliterate civilian populations, but states certainly do. The United States has done it twice quite recently, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Black Science is a comic book obviously put together by an experienced comic book professional. Rick Remender has been doing this for a while now, and for an issue mid-way through the story-arc it is very easy to follow. The art has a frenetic energy. It looks dirty and exciting, and although it took me a while to get to grips with the underlying themes of the narrative I think I have it now.

Some of the readers of this review might think that I’m projecting a lot of my own ideas into this book, making it into something that I want to read, rather than what is actually there. Perhaps you are right, but that’s what all good art does. It makes you think about the important things in your own life, and you take and consume it to fit your own needs. This book surprised me. It’s a grower, a book that made me think, and after a couple of reads, and a good amount of time digesting what I had read I’m very happy to recommend it to all readers of this review. Of course I now realise what I have to do next. I need to get those first seven issues, and get my thinking cap on. I want to know more about this group of anarchist scientists, their philosophies and their individual personalities. It’s going to be a real pleasure to go through those previous issues and discover the context behind what has happened in issue #8.  I’m so happy that I took a chance on what I thought would be just another silly comic book about evil anarchists. It’s not that, it’s a lot better book than that.

Rating: 9/10